Tokyo Electric Says Reactor Crisis Response Was ‘Best Possible’

A file photograph from 2010 of Masataka Shimizu, president of Tokyo Electric Power Co. Photographer: Toshiyuki Aizawa/Bloomberg

March 30 (Bloomberg) -- Tokyo Electric Power Co. for the
first time defended its response to the crisis at the Fukushima
Dai-Ichi nuclear power plant, with Chairman Tsunehisa Katsumata
rejecting claims the utility was slow to react.

Katsumata took charge after President Masataka Shimizu, 66,
was admitted to hospital for high blood pressure. Tepco, as the
company is known, moved quickly to pour seawater on the plant’s
reactors after the March 11 quake and tsunami knocked out its
cooling systems, he said.

“There wasn’t any hesitation in using sea water” on the
reactors, Katsumata, 71, said at a press briefing today,
responding to criticisms this step was delayed out of concern
the atomic units would be rendered useless. The company did
“the best possible” to deal with the accident, he said.

Shimizu hasn’t faced reporters since attending a March 13
press conference, two days after the 9-magnitude earthquake
struck northeastern Japan. Prime Minister Naoto Kan yesterday
said Tepco wasn’t adequately prepared for the tsunami that shut
down the plant’s cooling systems. Tokyo’s governor attacked the
company’s response to the crisis as slow.

“The company is a symbol of what is wrong with Japan and
what happens when there are no checks and balances,” said Edwin
Merner, Tokyo-based president of Atlantis Investment, which
manages about $3 billion in assets.

“Action is needed, not words and promises,” Merner said.
“Heads will roll and some figure head is needed to take the
blame. Fine, but then what? Solving the problem is the main
task, but there’s little a new president can do at this point.”

Ill From Overwork

Shimizu has been taking the lead at the company’s head
office in central Tokyo in Tepco’s response to the incident,
spokesman Takeo Iwamoto said March 24. Shimizu became ill
“through overwork” for a few days after March 16, and later
recovered, spokesman Kazufumi Suzuki said March 27.

Shimizu was hospitalized yesterday. He won’t be gone from
his post “for long,” Katsumata said today.

Katsumata stepped down from the top job in 2008 after a
temblor damaged Tepco’s biggest nuclear power plant at
Kashiwazaki Kariwa, caused some radiation to leak and stoked
public mistrust about its safety.

Katsumata, who joined Tepco in 1963 according to Bloomberg
data, became president in October 2002 after Hiroshi Araki and
Nobuya Minami, chairman and president at that time, stepped down
to take responsibility for faked safety reports at three nuclear
power plants.

Tsunami Defense

“It’s undeniable their assumptions about tsunamis were
greatly mistaken,” Prime Minister Kan said in parliament
yesterday. “The fact that their standards were too low invited
the current situation.”

Shimizu will be under pressure to step down in the wake of
the worst reactor crisis since Chernobyl in 1986, investors,
analysts and experts have said. Tepco shares have plunged 78
percent since the March 11 quake.

Shimizu proposed visiting the Fukushima Prefecture governor
Yuhei Sato to apologize for the accident on March 22, but was
asked to deal with events at the power plant first, Tepco
spokesman Takashi Kurita said.

Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara attacked Tepco’s reaction
to the crisis on March 25, after meeting with Sato. “Their
response has been no good at all,” he said. “It’s been slow.”

Tepco said March 28 it had overstated the level of
radiation in water on the floor of the No. 2 reactor’s generator
building. The level was 100,000 times normal, not 10 million
times as earlier reported, Vice President Sakae Muto said in a
briefing. Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency gave the
utility a verbal warning not to repeat the mistake, public
broadcaster NHK reported.

Tepco Candidates

Having Katsumata in charge rather than Shimizu “doesn’t
make any difference as Tepco is losing the initiative, while the
government plays a bigger role,” said Hiroki Shibata, a
Standard & Poor’s credit analyst covering Tepco. “There was
criticism of Tepco’s slow response and disclosure” under
Katsumata when the Kashiwazaki Kariwa plant was damaged.

Any successor for the top job at Tepco is likely to come
from the existing pool of executives. A Tepco president is often
selected from among those holding the dual title of director and
vice-president, according to the company’s website. The utility
has never appointed anyone to the post from outside the company.

The Fukushima Dai-Ichi crisis comes less than four years
after the 6.8-magnitude quake that shut the Kashiwazaki Kariwa
plant. Tepco knew in 2003 the Kashiwazaki Kariwa plant was
located near a fault that could cause a more powerful earthquake
than the one that damaged it in 2007, according to documents
Tepco filed to a trade ministry committee.